Are foreign coaches good for Nigerian football teams?
Since Sarina Wiegman led England’s women’s football team – The Lionesses – to victory at the recently concluded UEFA Women’s Euro 2022, some prominent sports journalists and football-loving Nigerians raised a critical question on social media: should Nigeria still discard foreign coaches in favour of local coaches?
Table of Content hide 1Performance details of foreign coaches who handled Nigerian teams in recent times 2Reasons England hired Wiegman, a foreigner, as their coach 3Are foreign coaches good for Nigerian football teams? 4Why foreign coaches who handled Nigerian national teams recently failed in their tasks 5Wiegman’s track record and exploits 6Spiffing CV of Gloria before Green Eagles’ appointment 7Final wordPerformance details of foreign coaches who handled Nigerian teams in recent times
The question is pertinent, especially in light of what transpired in the men’s and women’s teams in Nigerian football in the last year. Just to (painfully) recap, Nigeria struggled to qualify for the play-off qualifying round of the 2022 World Cup, securing a scrappy 1-1 draw against Cape Verde in November 2021. This led to the sack of Gernot Rohr, the Franco-German manager, by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).
The Super Eagles, however, struggled as Rohr’s replacement, Nigerian-born Augustine Eguavoen, failed to guide the team past the Round of 16 of the delayed 2021 Africa Cup of Nations. The Nigerian coach also failed to qualify the team for the 2022 World Cup, as Ghana secured the berth following an aggregate 1-1 draw in March 2022.
It was the same book of lamentations for the women’s game in Nigeria. After Thomas Dennerby resigned as the coach of the Super Falcons, the country’s senior women’s national team, in October 2019, the NFF appointed Randy Waldrum as the team’s substantive coach in October 2020. Waldrum, an American, began his reign in 2021 on a losing note as the Nigerian team were defeated in the final of the inaugural Aisha Buhari Cup. The performances in the subsequent Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) qualifier and the international friendlies against Canada were not encouraging and far from what Nigerians have seen of this team in previous years.
The 2022 WAFCON for a disaster for the Falcons as Waldrum could not guide the team to retain the championship and clinch the hugely desired La Decima (a Spanish term for the 10th title) African women’s title in Morocco. The hosts knocked the team out in the semi-final and failed to win the Third Place game against Zambia, finishing their campaign in the competition empty-handed.
Reasons England hired Wiegman, a foreigner, as their coach
The common denominator in the aforementioned scenarios is that foreign coaches managed both the Super Eagles and Super Falcons, and the teams were unvictorious when it mattered most: tournaments. And this leads back to Wiegman and her exploits.
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Wiegman is from The Netherlands, meaning that she is a foreign coach who guided England to victory at the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022. Before being employed by the English FA, Wiegman managed her native Netherlands for five years, from 2016 to 2021. During her reign with her country’s team, she led the Leeuwinnen to win the UEFA Women’s Euro 2017 and the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, where the team finished second behind the United States of America.
It was on the back of her impressive results as a coach that England appointed her to manage The Lionesses. Although the announcement was made in August 2020, Wiegman officially began her job in September 2021. Her first game in charge was an 8–0 win against North Macedonia in the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup qualifier. The English women’s team subsequently posted impressive results, culminating in England being crowned champions of Europe in July 2022.
Even more stunning is that the Dutch woman got The Lionesses to win their first ever major title just 10 months after she was appointed manager. She came in and did the job that Hope Powell, Mark Sampson, and Phil Neville – all English coaches – failed to do. Wiegman’s success has led Leah Williamson, the team’s captain, to describe her as “the missing ingredient England were looking for.”
Are foreign coaches good for Nigerian football teams?
Therefore, can foreign coaches – using Wiegman as a yardstick – be described as non-competent individuals, as indicated by sports journalists advocating for indigenous coaches for the Nigerian teams? Of course, not! In fact, four of Nigeria’s greatest moments in men’s football were orchestrated by foreign coaches: Otto Gloria (Brazilian/1980 AFCON title), Clemens Westerhof (Dutch/1994 AFCON title and qualification for 1994 FIFA World Cup), and Johannes Bonfrère (1996 Olympics Football Gold). Also, Dennerby won the 2018 WAFCON title and the inaugural West African Football Union (WAFU) Zone B Women’s Cup title in 2019.
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Can foreign coaches be great and work wonders for Nigeria’s men’s and women’s senior national teams? Definitely! They have successfully worked for the country in times past and even in current times. As Amaju Pinnick, the NFF President, once noted, foreign coaches bring a combination of a higher level of competence and rigid discipline needed to ensure their teams succeed. So, why has the situation with foreign coaches for the Nigerian national teams in terms of performances and results suddenly gone south recently?
Why foreign coaches who handled Nigerian national teams recently failed in their tasks
The unsavoury situation can be chiefly attributed to the lack of quality coaches hired by the NFF for the men’s and women’s teams. The CV of the hired foreign coaches indicates that they are not high-calibre managers who have distinguished themselves enough in their previous jobs to be given the magnitude of jobs as the Super Eagles and Super Falcons managers, respectively.
Looking at Rohr, for example, he had not managed any “big team” either at the club or national team levels before being appointed Super Eagles’ manager. His stints at the various African teams he managed before 2016 were underwhelming. So, even though he was, upon his arrival, able to stabilise a demoralised team from 2016 to 2019, he failed to reinvigorate the team for crucial tournaments such as the 2019 AFCON and the 2022 World Cup qualifiers.
It is also the same scenario concerning Waldrum. The American coach coached mainly teams playing in the US women’s collegiate football system, making several Nigerian coaches describe him as “NUGA coach” (referring to Nigeria’s replica of the US college games).
His only national team appointment with the Trinidad and Tobago women’s team (2014-2016) ended in him being fired from the job, despite winning the inaugural Caribbean women’s title in 2014. So, it was not surprising that his match-reading and man-management skills were questionable and not up to par during the 2022 WAFCON.
By all accounts, the foreign coaches hired to manage the Nigerian national football teams in recent times were not tried, tested, and trusted in rugged terrains, and had not distinguished themselves as tactically superior managers.
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Wiegman’s track record and exploits
In contrast, Wiegman had built an excellent track record, compelling enough to attract The Netherlands and England to grab her services. In her first-ever managerial job, she won the Dutch championship and the KNVB Cup (both women’s competitions) with Ter Leede in the 2006-2007 season. She then moved to ADO Den Haag in the newly formed Women’s Eredivisie where she spent seven years, winning the Eredivisie title and KNVB Cup in 2012 and the KNVB Cup in 2013.
After she earned her UEFA Pro Licence in 2016 and became the first woman to coach with a men’s professional club in The Netherlands following her one-year internship at Sparta Rotterdam, she was incorporated into the set-up of the Dutch women’s national team.
Wiegman had been appointed the interim coach of the team a year earlier in 2015, and after her role as an Assistant Manager of Sparta Rotterdam’s male team in 2016, she returned to the national team again in an interim capacity for one year. She was appointed the substantive coach of the Leeuwinnen in 2017; the rest, as it is said, is history. Because of her outstanding record as a trailblazer in the women’s game, England hired her, a job in which she has started to create records.
During the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022, Wiegman demonstrated her tactical expertise and sagacity with the 4-2-3-1/4-3-3 formation she set her England team up. The team varied their playing style from their possession-based movement to direct play mode, depending on the circumstances of each game. She brought discipline and a much more positive attitude to the team and pressed them to play slick, pragmatic football.
But the area of the game she gained top marks was for her timely substitutions, and the players brought in always made an impact. Consider the toughest games her team faced in the competition: against Spain (Q/final) and Germany (Final); it was the substitutes – Ella Toone, Alessia Russo, Chloe Kelly, Alex Greenwood, Jill Scott, and Nikita Parris – who changed the course of the game for The Lionesses.
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Spiffing CV of Gloria before Green Eagles’ appointment
Nigeria has also enjoyed a similar fortune in getting a top-tier foreign coach like Gloria to manage its men’s senior national team. Gloria was appointed the coach of the Green Eagles, as the team was then known, in 1978. However, before his appointment, he had won plaudits for his colossal achievements as a coach both at the club and national team levels.
The Brazilian Gloria won the Portuguese Primeira Liga four times with Benfica and twice with Sporting Lisbon, both clubs considered two of the biggest teams in the European country. He also won the Taça de Portugal (the Portugal Cup) three times with Benfica and once with Belenenses; he also won the Campeonato Paulista (top-flight football league among teams in the Brazilian state of São Paulo).
On the international stage, he managed the A Seleção (the national team of Portugal), which included the likes of the legendary striker Eusebio. Gloria guided the team to the 1966 World Cup, in which the team finished in third place. Before he was appointed the Green Eagles coach, Gloria was the President of the Brazil Coaches Association, one of the most respected positions in Brazilian football.
It was, therefore, not a surprise that a coach with such a pedigree as Gloria was well-respected when he came to Nigeria and started his work. As Segun “Mathematical” Odegbami, one of the Green Eagles’ stars, noted in a piece, Gloria introduced the Brazilian style and flair into Nigerian football, the exquisite skills and individual expressiveness on the ball the slick passing and movements. The ultimate result of Gloria’s three-year stint: Nigeria’s maiden AFCON title in 1980 at home in Lagos.
Final word
To my colleagues in the media and the ever passionate football-loving Nigerians, no situation bars foreign coaches from not being successful managers of the senior Nigerian national women’s and men’s football teams. As explained earlier, Nigeria has benefitted immensely from their expertise.
However, whenever the NFF wants to hire an expatriate coach, it must go for the most competent and tactically astute manager instead of using the excuse of “we are constrained by funds” as an alibi to recruit a low-level coach. The difference in quality that foreign coaches showcase when employed is crystal clear, as they develop and entrench a definite, understandable football philosophy and playing patterns for their teams.
The “Glass House” cannot expect Nigerians to accept and respect any coach brought from outside the country to manage the national teams just because he or she is an expatriate.
The eyes of all Nigerians will be on José Peseiro, the Portuguese coach of the Super Eagles, who seems to have a decent coaching record, on how he will navigate the 2023 AFCON qualifiers and how he can make the team a winning one again. For Waldrum, the less that is said, the better!
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